It’s all about Ebola. And beheadings too. Both virulent and both shocking
and horrific. But while the former evokes our finest feelings, the latter arouses
nothing but revulsion and contempt for the perpetrators who, seemingly, have
nothing of value to contribute to the human condition.
Ebola is a
biological agent that recognizes no frontier. It threatens most of its victims
with an impartial, squalid death. Unfortunately, the world’s response has, so
far, been relatively limp. This lack of resolve in tackling the threat has been
difficult to understand, especially since the epidemic has been knocking at
doors all around the world.
It is a hundred years since the first recognizably
viral epidemic became pandemic, killing some 20 million. Then, as now, the spin
doctors fell over each other to create as much confusion as possible, while
real doctors had their work cut out trying to contain it. Eventually, the spin
doctors satisfied their appetite for mischief by settling on Spain as the source of the epidemic. Thus “Spanish Flu” was born and, for
better or worse became the name by which the first influenza pandemic became
known.
Around that time, too another game was in progress.
In the score card of that one, some say, lie the seeds of the unending chaos in
the Middle East that continue to germinate one horror after another. But that
was then.
Now is now and we have, in the intervening decades,
learned a lot about viruses and the diseases they cause. We know precisely how
most of them transmit from person to person and from which animal species some
of them migrate. But there is a lot we still don’t know and that has left space
for the range of crack-pot notions such as those pervading the internet. They certainly
do not need my help for their propagation so I will not mention them. I will also
for now, forgo the pleasure of listing the Nobel laureates who, by their work on
viruses and virus-related disease have made life safer and better for
billions. Too bad the messages contained in their acts of valor are
drowned by foolish utterances of conspiracy theorists who have nothing useful
to say.
But perhaps we would not be where we are today with
this epidemic and soon-to-be pandemic, Ebola, if others, responsible for
keeping the world safe, had taken their job seriously. We are told, for
example, that unusual sickness and deaths began to be observed in Guinea in
December 2013. http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1409858. Yet,
astonishingly, neither the Guinean authorities, nor the WHO reported the
looming threat until March 23, 2014. We were in Sierra Leone in January/February
and, at that time news began to emerge of an outbreak of a hemorrhagic fever in
Guinea that was already spreading to Liberia and eastern Sierra Leone. What
were the authorities doing? Why did they have to wait till March before
sounding the alarm?
Now, today, there are over 8000 Ebola cases in the
region, with an overall mortality of more than 50%. And today WHO, perhaps
compensating for its earlier dereliction, is pumping up projections of new cases
for the next two months. However, one might take comfort in the fact that in
Sierra Leone the incidence figures and death statistics are not as dire as the
overall picture in the region might suggest, although the slope of the graph
describing total cases is getting steeper as the weeks go by.
 |
| Sierra Leone Ebola Stats to 12 October 2014 |
Also, death rate is still being maintained at a steady 30-40%. Grim
enough, but not as devastating as for untreated Ebola. Trouble is, can we rely
on the quality of the data that the Sierra Leone Ministry of Health put out in
their daily briefings? Further, we are now hearing that cases are being turned
away from treatment centres. So it is likely that there is under-reporting
anyway. Indeed, one online paper is suggesting that the government of Sierra
Leone is tacitly surrendering to the virus because it is now encouraging home
treatment of patients: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/10/ebola_patients_in_sierra_leone_to_be_treated_at_home.html.
Surrender? Probably not. At least not just yet. Just another way of
fighting a relentless foe, against which all available tactics must be
deployed.
Tell Fren
Tru
